The grid of lantern-makers' shops along Kawara-machi still follows the logic of an Edo-period port town — narrow frontages, latticed facades, the occasional smell of lacquer drifting from a workshop doorway. This is the quarter where river merchants once stored goods moving along the Nagara-gawa, and the bones of that commerce remain visible in the proportions of the buildings. Gifu city grew on this alluvial fan, shaped by the river and by the trade it carried.
Kinka-zan rises steeply behind Gifu-koen, and the cormorant-fishing boats built at the Ukai Kanransen Zosensho below it are still made by hand — the only public boatyard of its kind in the country, where the joinery of a working wooden vessel is visible to anyone who walks past. The Nagara-gawa itself, one of Japan's notably clear rivers, runs through the center of the city rather than past its edge, and the summer practice of ukai — fishing by torchlight with trained cormorants — has continued here for well over a millennium.
Street-level Gifu moves between registers: the craft heritage of Gifu chochin lanterns and Gifu wagasa oiled-paper umbrellas, the textile warehouses that made this a major fashion-industry hub through the postwar decades, and the ordinary commuter rhythm of the Meitetsu and JR stations feeding daily traffic toward Nagoya. Betsukon ramen and ayu sweetfish from the Nagara-gawa sit on menus alongside cold tanuki soba — the food, like the city itself, layered without ceremony.
Where to stay
A day is rarely enough.
Booking through these links supports AURA at no extra cost to you.
What converges here
7 in this city. 51 within 25 km of the city hall.
- Gifu Prefectural Archives
- Nawa Insect Museum
- Eizō & Tōichi Katō Memorial Art Museum
- Sankō Museum
- Gifu City Science Museum
See the nearest 25
- The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu
- Hara Sankei Memorial Room
- Ginan-chō Folk Historical Museum
- Kasamatsu Museum History and Future
- 各務原市埋蔵文化財調査センター
- Museum of History and Folklore
- 各務原市木曽川文化史料館
- Sunomata Local History Museum
- Motosu Folk Museum
- Gifu-Kakamigahara Air and Space Museum
- Gifu Prefectural Museum
- Ōno Akebono Museum
- Fuji Takehana Machiya Gallery
- 山県市文化の里古田紹欽記念館
- Takehana Matsuri Dashi Hall
- 日本国際ポスター美術館
- Ichinomiya City Memorial Art Museum of Setsuko Migishi
- Gifu Collection of Modern Arts
- ハートピア安八
- 日比野五鳳記念美術館
- Ichinomiya Bisai Museum of History and Folklore
- OKBギャラリー
- Toyoshima Memorial Museum
- Enkū Museum
- Ōgaki Castle
Distances are straight-line from the municipal office. Each website was checked in September 2026.
- Cultural Landscape of Gifu in the Middle Reaches of the Nagara River
- Kano Castle Ruins
- Gifu Castle Ruins
- Kotozuka Tumulus
- Oboro and Asakura Sue Ware Kiln Site
- Ema-shi Yakata Site Garden
- Chujo-hime Seigan-zakura
- Hakusan Shrine Haiden
- Nagaragawa Onsen
- Mitadо Shinbutsu Onsen
- Mount Kinka
- Gifu
- Meitetsu-Gifu
- Nishi-Gifu
- Yanazu
- Hosohata
- Nagamori
- Tagami
- Kiridoshi
- Tedori
- Takatabashi
- Chasho
- Kano
- Meitetsu Gifu
- Gifu